I wake up at around 9 a.m. these days. We have given up on making the kids do their morning school video meetings at 8 a.m. Central Time. I start the mornings making breakfast in a 1950’s farmhouse looking out from the kitchen window at a beautiful red barn. Rolling farmland behind that old barn and the blue blue sky with puffy white clouds surrounding us. Birds chirp, spring is coming little by little. I’ve stopped putting the news on first thing in the morning to find how many died overnight. I stare out this window a lot. It’s my favorite view, I think ever. I stare and some times think, “I used to be an actress.” I don’t think it in a sorrowful way. Not self-pitying, but really truly unsure of everything. I have no idea what my future holds. I used to be an actress. I have no idea what I or the world will be next. Honestly, I am afraid to act again right now. I am afraid to hug, touch, love, cry, feel with anyone not in my little family. I wouldn’t feel safe and I don’t know when I will feel safe again. That is my truth. So then who am I?

I started studying acting when I was fourteen. But didn’t own the title actress until I was seventeen. Shortly after I graduated high school I vividly remember consciously choosing to change saying, “I want to be an actress” to “I am an actress.” So I’ve held on to this identity very strongly. I am also Nuyorican. That is another identity that has always been at the front of my conscious. So here I am a Nuyorican actress in a 1950’s farmhouse in rural Wisconsin, isolated with my husband and children from a plague. It all seems so weird and yet mundane in our little hideaway. How the hell did this happen?

We fled NY in five hours. Five days after the schools closed we found a place to stay and packed what we needed in the car and drove. Toilet paper, paper towel, disinfectant, gloves, all our food, laundry, two kids, a dog, my husband and me. I was literally terrified of staying in NY. I had anxiety to the point that I was unable to form words. I know it sounds dramatic, but I had no control over the stuttering and then crying that would happen without warning. My fight or flight instinct was on overdrive. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. I was supposed to be preparing for a dream role. I was supposed to be packing to go to Cleveland to play Nora in A Dolls House Part II. Rehearsals were supposed to start in two weeks. As we drove to Wisconsin, driving past Cleveland added to the apocalyptic feeling of fleeing the city I was born and raised in, on a moment’s notice with whatever we could fit in the car.

I feel guilty for feeling the loss of this job. The loss of being an actress. It really isn’t that important and others have it so much worse. My family is extremely privileged in this situation. We have space and are truly isolated. Now that we have been totally isolated (aside from the biweekly trip my husband takes to the supermarket) for over a month, I’ve even stopped having psychosomatic symptoms daily. I am constantly aware of our privilege. I keep thinking about my young self. And how my family would have weathered this storm, the six of us in a two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn cooped up together. Living paycheck to paycheck to suddenly being without paychecks. It makes me so sad. Then suddenly so grateful. My dad was the super of the building I grew up in until this September, when he just packed up suddenly and moved back to Puerto Rico. I thank God every single day that he isn’t in that building right now. Two people have died in our old building so far.

As I stare out the window at my favorite view, questions of what life, my career, the world are going to look like after the pandemic swim around my mind. But having all this time to think about my career. Who I wanted to be. Who I am. I must be honest, Nora is hard to let go of. Lets face it, it’s slim pickings in this business for the ladies over forty who aren’t famous—and a Latina! So Nora really felt like something special. I’ve had many disappointments as all actors do. They seem extra silly now but if I’m honest they hurt. Because of the pain it has caused I don’t usually admit to things mattering. It hurts too much to openly care. I try to shrug it off and move on. Maybe I can take this time of solitude to really be kind to myself. Give myself permission to feel the loss of the things that still matter that I didn’t give space to before. And maybe seeing them in the context of my very fortunate life will help me grow into whoever I am meant to be. I used to be a certain actress. Who will I be when this is over?